The Gargano
A piece of mountain that ended up in the middle of the sea, with a beech forest inside it.
The Gargano is the spur of the boot and it is an anomaly: geologically it does not belong to the rest of Puglia, it was an island, and it joined the peninsula when the sea withdrew. What is left is a block of limestone a thousand metres high with water on three sides, and an environment that resembles nothing around it.
The coast is the campsite coast: from Rodi Garganico to Peschici, Vieste and Mattinata there are pine woods above the sea, coves of white pebbles, cliffs and sea caves visited by boat. At Vieste stands the Pizzomunno, a limestone monolith twenty-five metres high at the end of the beach, and along the coast the trabucchi survive, the wooden fishing machines.
Inland
Above the coast, at seven hundred metres, the Foresta Umbra begins: eleven thousand hectares of beech, turkey oak and yew, Unesco heritage since 2017, with marked paths and a visitor centre. Not far off stands Monte Sant'Angelo, where the cave dedicated to Saint Michael has received pilgrims since the fifth century and has been Unesco heritage since 2011.
The Tremiti islands lie twenty miles offshore: in summer boats leave from Vieste, Peschici and Rodi, and the crossing takes a little over an hour. The whole Gargano is inside a national park, which explains why there is less building along the coast than there would otherwise have been.